Dueling Job Creation Plans From Labor, Business

In anticipation of the president's speech on job creation, big business and big labor are weighing in with their own prescriptions for putting millions of unemployed Americans back to work. What solutions are they backing and can they agree on any? And to what extent do these plans overlap with the one the president is expected to unveil when he speaks this Thursday?

Obama's speech comes on the heels of a bleak jobs report, released Friday, which found no net gain in new jobs for August. Some 14 million Americans remain out of work. Of those, almost half have been out of work six months or longer. The jobless rate is forecast to remain at around 9 percent through the end of 2012.

Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, are offering their own plans for creating jobs. Both men last week described the steps they believe would produce job growth.

Donohue, in a preview of a more detailed plan the U.S. Chamber will submit this week to the White House, advocates investing in U.S. infrastructure--building or repairing schools, ports, roads, bridges, railroads, airports. Such projects, he says, would "put idle construction workers back to work." The Chamber also advocates investing in domestic energy production; cutting red tape and removing regulatory barriers; and approving pending free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia--which, the Chamber says, would save 380,000 existing jobs and create thousands of new ones.

Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, endorses infrastructure projects. He also wants the federal government to create jobs directly, though a program like the New Deal's WPA. To boost consumer demand he'd increase consumer confidence by extending unemployment benefits and by providing mortgage relief to homeowners worried that they'll lose their homes. In addition, the AFL-CIO advocates a "speculation tax" that would force Wall Street "to pay to rebuild the economy it helped destroy."

What will President Obama recommend? No one knows for sure, but he's already said he favors infrastructure projects and advocates creation of an infrastructure bank to help fund them. He's said he wants to extend payroll-tax cuts: In December, Congress and the White House agreed to a 1-year cut in the amount of money employees have to pay in Social Security taxes. That cut put an estimated $1,000 in the pocket of the average family.

He'll likely commit, say White House watchers, to a further extension of jobless benefits. He may recommend one or more programs that would give employers new incentives to hire--especially to hire the long-term unemployed. These programs might offer subsidies, tax credits, or both to participating employers.

Are infrastructure projects, then, the only big thing the White House, labor and business can agree on?

"Yes, that's fair to say," says Damon Silvers, policy director for the AFL-CIO."That's why you see both presidents Trumka and Donohue speaking jointly on this subject. We all agree on that one." On all the details? "Maybe not. But in principle."